TODAY’S STUDY: DIGITAL SPEW

The Greenpeace International report highlighted below is a fine delineation of the way the digital world consumes energy, often dirty energy. Greenpeace surely knows the major domos of the digital will squirm to read about what they could be doing better

But as Michael Kanellos, editor-in-chief of Greentech Media, pointed out in Why You Should Ignore the Greenpeace IT Rankings, there is a real shortsightedness in the report. "The web and computers do consume quite a bit of power," Mike wrote, "...but here is what the organization is underplaying in its report: The growth in web activity and at datacenters comes because the IT industry is subsuming activities that in the past consumed far more fossil fuels. A study out of Stanford University states that the shift from CDs to digital downloads has cut the energy required in delivering music to customers by 40 percent to 80 percent. Think of all of those plastic jewel cases you no longer need.

"Videoconferencing has allowed Microsoft to cut its travel budget by 30 percent per capita. SAP's videoconferencing system paid for itself within a year in plane tickets to Frankfurt that didn't have to be bought.

"Paper? E-books, electronic ticketing, digital photo sharing sites and other technologies have certainly reduced the need for chopping down trees, hauling logs, chewing them into pulp and then shipping the hefty end-products thousands of miles. That two percent is a downright bargain."

And, as Mike pointed out, the digitallers are also investing in New Energy. Google recently made three major wind power purchases. As Mike wrote, "Yahoo opened an energy-efficient data center last year near Buffalo, New York that requires virtually no mechanical air conditioning...[M]ost companies view energy efficiency as a way to make money and expand market share. Simply put, if Dell can sell more energy-efficient servers than HP and establish a better ROI, Dell can sell more hardware."

There is much more in his informative and readable piece which Mike, in his inimitable style, wraps up with a jibe at the icons of green: "So why is Greenpeace highlighting datacenters? Who knows? Perhaps the practices of Apple and Facebook make better headlines than those of Toyo Chemical Industries...Besides, it certainly will help Greenpeace's web traffic."

How dirty is your data? A Look at the Energy Choices that Power Cloud Computing
April 2011 (Greenpeace International)

Executive Summary

Information Technology (IT) is disruptive. Largely for the better, IT has disrupted the way we travel, communicate, conduct business, produce, socialise and manage our homes and lives. This disruptive ability has the potential to reduce our dependence on dirty energy and make society cleaner, more efficient and powered renewably. But as we applaud the positive, visible impacts and measurable, game-changing potential of IT, we also need to pay attention to what’s behind the curtain.

The ‘cloud’ is IT’s biggest innovation and disruption. Cloud computing is converting our work, finances, health and relationships into invisible data, centralised in out-of-the-way storage facilities or data centres. This report seeks to answer an important question about this trend, currently underway across the globe: As cloud technology disrupts our lives in many positive ways, are the companies that are changing everything failing to address their own growing environmental footprint?

A quick glance at the letter grades on our Cloud Energy Report Card…indicates that many IT brands at the vanguard of this 21st century technological shift are perpetuating our addiction to dirty energy technologies of the last two centuries. We analysed the data centre investments of 10 top global cloud companies and our findings show a trend across the industry towards extolling the external effects of IT products and services, while failing to take seriously the need to power this widespread aggregation of the world’s information with clean, renewable electricity.

Parts of our individual lives are becoming more efficient even as we consume more. IT can enable us to cut down on energy intensive practices by allowing us to work from home with teleconferencing and telecommuting tools. We can now read our electricity use in real time and manage it better accordingly. We can stream music on the internet instead of taking up space on our hard drives. In each of these examples, there is potential for us to choose to live in less energy-intensive ways, cut our personal greenhouse gas emissions, and shrink our footprint, individually and collectively.

The IT sector has a choice to make as well. As the demand for IT products and services grows exponentially, in the US, Europe and particularly in developing economies such as India and China, so does the amount of data we produce globally. That information requires physical storage and access to reliable electricity. Indeed IT’s server farms are expanding and multiplying rapidly. In our technologically interconnected world, data centres are the factories of the 21st Century.

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Whereas the factories of the Industrial Revolution got us into a mess by burning coal and releasing carbon pollution into the atmosphere, the factories of the Technology Revolution have the ability to make use of better energy choices. In the following report, we have looked at available information about the choices being made today by major IT brands about where to site and how to power their factories. It is clear that their commitment to transformative change, which includes responsibility for their own growing footprint, is still in question.

Additionally, much of the information that would allow us to assess the net benefits of the cloud by also measuring the true environmental cost of these localised, power-hungry data centers is missing. IT companies, which broadly declare transparency a major tenet of their business model, are highly secretive about their own operations. This veil of secrecy makes it nearly impossible to measure the actual benefits of cloud technologies or understand the extent to which IT’s growing need for electricity is increasing the use of dirty energy.

While a few companies have clearly understood that the source of energy is a critical factor in how green or dirty our data is, and have demonstrated a commitment to driving investment attached to clean sources of electricity, the sector as a whole still seeks to define 'green' as being 'more efficient'. This failure to commit to clean energy in the same way energy efficiency is embraced is driving demand for dirty energy, and is holding the sector back from being truly green.

Throughout this report, we attempt to shed light on the state of the cloud’s energy footprint by examining available information about IT companies and their data centres. First, we have attempted to explain and summarise the problem through examples of data centre investment and a graded analysis of the infrastructure choices of leading cloud companies. We also assessed best practices and leading footprint mitigation strategies. Finally, we have included some key recommendations for a sector that wishes to be seen as green and transformative, but is coming up short on it’s transparency and energy choices.

Will companies such as Facebook, Apple, Twitter, Google and Yahoo! perpetuate the dirty energy issues of older, entrenched industries, or will the innovative IT sector band together to embrace a transformative business model that prioritises a future built on clean, renewable energy?

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Key learnings:

•Data centres to house the explosion of virtual information currently consume 1.5-2% of all global electricity; this is growing at a rate of 12% a year.

•The IT industry points to cloud computing as the new, green model for our IT infrastructure needs, but few companies provide data that would allow us to objectively evaluate these claims.

•The technologies of the 21st century are still largely powered by the dirty coal power of the past, with over half of the companies rated herein relying on coal for between 50% and 80% of their energy needs.

•IT innovations have the potential to cut greenhouse gas emissions across all sectors of the economy, but IT’s own growing demand for dirty energy remains largely unaddressed by the world’s biggest IT brands.

•There is a lack of transparency across the industry about IT’s own greenhouse gas footprint and a need to open up the books on its energy footprint.

•In emerging markets, where there is limited reliable grid electricity, there is a tremendous opportunity for telecom operators to show leadership by investing in renewable energy, but many are relying on heavily polluting diesel generators to fuel their growth.

•Data centre clusters (Google, Facebook, Apple) are cropping up in places like North Carolina and the US Midwest, where cheap and dirty coal-powered electricity is abundant.

•IT companies are failing to prioritise access to clean and renewable energy in their infrastructure siting decisions.

•Of the 10 brands graded, Akamai, a global content distribution network, earned top-of-the-class recognition for transparency; Yahoo! had the strongest infrastructure siting policy; Google & IBM demonstrated the most comprehensive overall approach to reduce its carbon footprint to date.

•Across the board, IT companies have thus far failed to commit to clean energy in the same way they are embracing energy efficiency, which is holding the sector back from being truly green.

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Introduction

The spread of mobile communication and information technology (IT) is changing how we communicate, relate and manage our daily lives at astounding speeds. Current estimates of our global communications spending for 2011 will reach $4.34 trillion US dollars, and is forecasted to top $5tn in the year 20131.

The instant access to information provided by smartphones, the internet and cloud computing is powerful and, in some cases, allows people around the world to ‘leapfrog’ previous stops on the pathway to development. Accelerated technological iteration brings better means of communication, on a bigger scale, than had previously seemed possible.

But the ongoing, global delivery of entertainment and media via services such as Google, iTunes, Twitter and Facebook is only one small example of a much larger shift to digitisation. Many major sectors of the service economy are rapidly moving from conventional business and delivery models to one that is delivered online.

We have generated 1.2 zettabytes of digital information (zettabyte = 1 trillion gigabytes or 250bn DVDs) with our tweets, YouTube videos, Facebook status updates, iTunes downloads, emails and other data transfers. Additionally, there are five billion mobile users worldwide, and over 50bn mobile connections are predicted by 20202 as smart meters and other ‘smart’ devices are added to online networks. The size of the digital world is predicted to continue to increase by a factor of 44 by 20203.

This societal shift to moving 1s and 0s instead of atoms and mass has the potential to significantly reduce our footprint on the planet and achieve a more sustainable model for housing the soon-to-be 7 billion neighbours we share it with. However, since the ‘cloud’ allows our digital consumption to be largely invisible, arriving magically with the tap of the ‘refresh’ button in our inboxes or onto our smartphones and tablets for immediate access, we may fail to recognise that the information we receive actually devours more and more electricity as our digital lives grow.

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The data centres that house this explosion of digital information currently consume more than 3% of US electricity, and approximately 1.5% to 2% of global electricity, growing at a rate of approximately 12% annually.4 Electronic devices account for 15% of home electricity use, and are predicted to triple by 2030, equivalent to the electricity demand of the US and Japan residential market combined.

And yet, despite the IT sector’s stated commitment to transparency and openness, it remains secretive about its energy use and carbon footprint at a time when the world is facing the potential for catastrophic climate change.

Our energy future and our ability to build the clean energy economy are impacted by choices we make, large and small, every day. A choice to prolong our addiction to dirty energy sources instead of choosing clean sources of energy, and the economic and environmental benefits that come with that choice, will have lasting consequences. This report seeks to illuminate the choices of major global IT brands as they compete in a global race to construct a new reality on the cloud.

This report covers:

•Choices that major IT brands are making as they set up cloud infrastructure and the energy consequences attached to those decisions;

•An assessment of green computing leadership, highlighting the good and the bad; and

•Recommendations for the IT sector on how to show bold leadership and green the cloud.

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Data is power: clean or dirty?

Our global addiction to dirty energy (fossil fuels and nuclear power) has catastrophic impacts on the health of our societies and the global environment. As our addiction grows larger, so does the size of the problems: oil spills, nuclear accidents and widespread health effects from air pollution. And the biggest crisis of them all is climate change. Scientists have warned us that global CO2 emissions must peak by 2015, and decline afterwards, if we hope to avoid a permanent and planetary crisis.

Every sector in the economy must take responsibility for reducing the use of dirty energy, particularly the IT sector, which stands to profit from an increase in the use of technological clean energy solutions. Greenpeace sees great potential for the IT sector to transform how we generate and manage our energy needs. In fact, we cannot achieve the level of reduction need to protect the planet without IT energy solutions that will allow us to shift away from dirty energy sources and build our economic and planetary prosperity on clean sources of energy.

But despite the speed and ingenuity of the devices and networks that deliver this information to us, and their potential to make a positive contribution to cutting carbon out of many of our daily activities, the key elements of 21st Century digital infrastructure are still primarily powered by 19th and 20th Century dirty energy – coal and nuclear power - which are largely responsible for our catastrophic levels of global pollution.

The IT industry often points to the cloud or cloud computing as the new, green model for our IT infrastructure needs, but few companies provide data that would allow us to objectively evaluate these claims. In contrast to the functionality of their products, there is a pervasive lack of transparency regarding the environmental impact and energy consumption of IT operations. It is increasingly troubling that IT companies characteristically refuse to disclose the amount of electricity consumed, carbon emitted, or nuclear waste produced as a result of maintaining our digital infrastructure.

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Efficiency is not enough

Companies usually seek to shift a discussion of rising IT emissions to the sector’s tremendous gains in energy efficiency and examples of how technology is helping to reduce energy consumption elsewhere. It is true that the IT sector has steadily demonstrated improvements in energy efficiency. It has made significant strides toward reducing the energy consumption of its data centres after many years of neglect.

But as the electricity demand of IT remains on the rise, efficiency can only slow emission growth. In order to achieve the reductions necessary to keep the sector’s emissions in check and maintain safe levels of global greenhouse gases, clean energy needs to become the primary source of power for IT infrastructure. A few companies have taken steps to steer their infrastructure investments toward cleaner energy, but the sector as a whole remains focused on rapid growth. The replacement of dirty sources of electricity with clean renewable ones is still the crucial missing link in the sector’s sustainability efforts.

IT's energy impact is hard to measure

Numerous studies have attempted to quantify the greenhouse gas emissions savings that IT can enable across the global economy.

There is strong evidence of IT’s potential to create efficiency gains and cut carbon emissions by catalysing dramatic behavioural and energy-use changes. In developing countries, such as India and China, it is now possible to grow the economy with these technologies, ‘leapfrogging’ the energy-intensive development of industrial economies like the US.

The Climate Group’s report, SMART 2020: Enabling the low carbon economy in the Information Age5, calculates the potential savings of a shift to IT-enabled solutions, such as dematerialisation, smart grid, telecommuting and others, in the transport, building, power and industrial sectors. IT can transform the economy by applying its technologies to other industries, helping them move away from inefficient or high carbon products and systems.

It is challenging, however, to find data on the actual net impacts of applied IT technologies due to information gaps and a multiplicity of variables, as well as a lack of transparency around the lifecycle impacts of IT’s own growing emissions and rising electricity use.

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Greenpeace evaluates the progress of major IT companies toward the energy and emissions saving potential identified in the SMART 2020 report on our Cool IT Leaderboard…

Smart Grid: IT can make the intangibles of our energy use visible through energy tracking and management tools. Behavioural change is one key to unlocking IT’s potential, but consumers need access to the right tools. A smart grid allows for real time information to flow between the power generator or utility and the customer. In combination with software like Google’s PowerMeter, which translates that data into information that is understandable and educational to the consumer, the smart grid can result in emission savings by helping individuals better manage their energy use.

The power sector was responsible for 26% of global emissions in 20087, the largest contributor globally, and could be responsible for 14.26 GtCO2e in 20208, so the potential for IT to reduce power sector emissions through smart grid technology could be substantial – some 2.03 GtCO2e by 2020. It represents the largest IT opportunity identified in the SMART 2020 study, and cost savings estimates of up to €79bn ($124.6bn).

In addition to helping consumers save energy, the smart grid can support decentralised clean energy production from sources such as solar and wind. As the energy footprint of IT data centers expands, we are urging companies to employ direct on-site renewable energy installation to power more of their operations.

The smart system can help companies and individuals that produce their own energy send unused capacity back to the grid, thus helping to power IT operations and offset the burden of its own electricity demand. More cooperation, better data, and greater transparency are needed to fulfill the promised savings of smart grid and metering technologies.

Dematerialisation: Moving bits instead of atoms could reduce emissions significantly, but similar challenges and unknowns exist surrounding technology penetration and development.

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Telecommuting is, in fact, one of the largest opportunities in this category, but dematerialisation can also be applied to lifestyle activities and help us trade manufactured goods for cloud-based practices.

Digital music: Microsoft and Intel commissioned a report in 2009 to assess the energy and CO2 performance of downloaded digital music over the electronic purchases of compact discs. While savings are evident, the report underscores the need for a better understanding of more variables and greater consideration of the energy sources behind data storage in each scenario. As society moves to cloud-based information storage, the source of energy matters, and a direct comparison of the options can only be made with more transparency around the carbon footprint of cloud hosting.

Telecommuting: Working remotely could reduce business travel and office building emissions by large percentages, although other emissions will increase as employees come to rely more heavily on their electronics and telecommunication networks to stay in touch.

This example stresses the importance of transparency relating to the energy demands associated with telecommuting and a wide array of IT tools, such as teleconferencing. Without that information, which companies are reluctant to share, it is impossible to properly assess the balance sheet.

SMART 2020 identifies how a shift to energy saving IT technologies could produce global reductions of up to 15% by 2020. Realisation of that potential will require better data, greater transparency, bold public policies, incentives and active consumer participation. IT opportunities have great potential, but IT companies must demonstrate that the sources of energy used to power our virtual lives are clean and renewable.

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Getting Renewable Energy Right

Greenpeace advocates for the global deployment of clean and sustainable renewable energy to replace existing hazardous and dirty fuels and meet the rapidly growing global demand for energy. In 2010 we published Energy [R]evolution27, a practical blueprint for the world_s renewable energy future, which was developed in conjunction with specialists from the European Renewable Energy Council (EREC) and the Institute of Technical Thermodynamics at the German Aerospace Centre (DLR), along with more than 30 scientists and engineers from around the world.

Energy [R]evolution demonstrates a pathway for the world to phase out fossil fuels and reduce CO2 emissions, while ensuring energy security, but not all replacement power sources are created equal. Below is a list of those sources that can help the IT industry, and the rest of the world, trade in dirty energy for safe, renewable electricity.

Wind power: large-scale development of onshore and offshore wind power, though special attention should be given to minimizing the impact on wildlife and biodiversity;

Solar energy: large-scale development of thermal solar energy and solar power for electricity production through photovoltaics and concentrating;

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Hydropower: dams built according to the criteria of the World Commission on Dams;

Bioenergy: use of biomass for electricity production and biofuels for transport that meet sustainability criteria (environmentally and socially responsible production, does not cause direct or indirect land-use changes, and does not threaten food security), and result in actual greenhouse gas emissions reductions. Greenpeace does not support the use of non-organic waste or co-firing of biomass in coal-fired power stations;

Geothermal power: Greenpeace supports the development of geothermal power;

Marine/Oceans power: wave, current and tidal power with thorough environmental impact assessment and strict criteria to minimise the environmental impact of tidal power.

There are a number of so-called ‘clean’ alternatives that fail to safely or reliably reduce carbon emissions. Given the questionable effectiveness of Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS), for example, as well as potential liability and uncertainty surrounding its ability to regulate its safety and environmental impacts, the application of CCS to coal-fired power stations should not be considered as a means of meeting infrastructural electricity demands. A full Greenpeace analysis of CCS can be found in our 2008 report,

False Hope: Why Carbon Capture and Storage Won’t Save the Climate…

Nuclear power

Greenpeace has always vigorously opposed investment in nuclear power because of its unacceptable risk to the environment and human health, which we have unfortunately been reminded of by the crisis in Japan. Greenpeace is advocating for a halt to the expansion of all nuclear power, and for the shutdown of existing plants.

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Key concerns:

• Nuclear energy is an expensive diversion from the development and deployment of renewable energy, energy efficiency, and decentralised energy systems required for a low carbon future.

• We can reduce carbon emissions much more cheaply and effectively using renewable energy and energy efficiency measures.

• No proven long-term solution exists for dealing with radioactive waste.

• Expanding nuclear power internationally would hugely increase the risk of terrorism and nuclear weapons proliferation.

• Nuclear power plants cannot be built a timeframe necessary to make even the smallest difference in combating climate change.

Data centres powered by nukes:

- Microsoft’s Chicago Data Centre
- Facebook Forest City

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Where to find renewable cloud power

In Iowa, Google has signed a 20-year power purchasing agreement with a wind energy company, though the clean electricity that will be generated there is not yet linked to a specific facility. Google has pledged to retire the renewable energy credits earned by the agreement. Microsoft also recently announced an agreement to buy wind energy for its Dublin data centre.

i/o Data Centers is installing a massive solar array on top of its new 580,000 sq ft facility in Phoenix, with 5,000 panels that will generate a total 4.5MW at peak capacity. Though just a fraction of the facility’s total 80MW capacity, the solar panels will be married with thermal storage technology that will reduce the energy drain of cooling during the heat of the day. The solar had outsized impact on cost, as it provides on-site generation when grid energy is most expensive…

Next Generation Data (NGD) in Newport, Wales, claims to be 100% renewably powered through its purchasing agreement with SmartestEnergy, the UK’s largest purchaser of electricity from independent generators of renewable energy. The SmartestEnergy website indicates that customers can choose the proportion and mix of renewables, including wind, hydro and biomass, but NGD does not disclose its specific choices or quantities…

In Iceland, GreenQloud is powered 100% by geothermal and hydropower energy, delivering hosting and storage services. The Star Peak Energy Center31, though still in concept phase, is also pushing a vision of renewably powered data. The company plans to generate geothermal power and attract data centre operators to locate their facilities at its site and purchase Star Peak’s renewable energy.